Log24

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Fountain Head …

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:20 am

A mashup for Josefine   from R. Mutt.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Ayn Sof (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:31 pm

Later …

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Self-Awareness

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

Robots pass "wise-men puzzle" to show a degree of self-awareness

New app … discourages self-awareness on social media —

"Self-awareness is a good thing.
Self-awareness is what tells us
'Hey, maybe just give us the highlights reel….'"

From this journal on July 13, Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —

Lyche's shirt honors the late Kurt Cobain.

"Here we are now, entertain us."

Dance scene from the 2015 film "Ex Machina"

Monday, July 13, 2015

Weaving World

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:45 pm

(The title was suggested by the novel Weaveworld .)

Recent public selfie by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —

Lyche's shirt honors the late Kurt Cobain.

Not-so-recent image of Hugo Weaving as
Agent Smith in "The Matrix" —

"Smells like teen spirit."

See also Weaving in the new film "Strangerland."

Wednesday, June 10, 2015

Welcome to Noplace

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:01 pm

See an informative essay at noplace.no on the work of
Oslo artist Josefine Lyche in connection with her current
(June 12-21) exhibition, "Contact."

A paragraph from that essay —

See also Lyche in this journal.

Tuesday, May 26, 2015

From Our House to Bauhaus

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:30 am

Street view in Oslo, August 2014 (thanks to Google):

Vennligst benytt fortau pa andre siden =
Please use the sidewalk on the other side

Take a walk on the wild side… or not.

This post was suggested by a Log24 post, Gaze, of May 21, 2015, and by
an Instagram photo that Oslo artist Josefine Lyche posted today.

Sunday, April 26, 2015

Norwegian Woods

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

The title appears as a joint heading for three reviews 
of Norway-related books on the front page of the print
version of today's New York Times Sunday Book Review .

See as well Josefine Lyche in this journal.

Saturday, February 21, 2015

High and Low Concepts

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 4:30 pm

Steven Pressfield on April 25, 2012:

What exactly is High Concept?

Let’s start with its opposite, low concept.
Low concept stories are personal,
idiosyncratic, ambiguous, often European. 
“Well, it’s a sensitive fable about a Swedish
sardine fisherman whose wife and daughter
find themselves conflicted over … ”

ZZZZZZZZ.

Fans of Oslo artist Josefine Lyche know she has
valiantly struggled to find a high-concept approach
to the diamond theorem. Any such approach must,
unfortunately, reckon with the following low
(i.e., not easily summarized) concept —

The Diamond Theorem Correlation:

From left to right

http://www.log24.com/log/pix14B/140824-Diamond-Theorem-Correlation-1202w.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix14B/140731-Diamond-Theorem-Correlation-747w.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix14B/140824-Picturing_the_Smallest-1986.gif

http://www.log24.com/log/pix14B/140806-ProjPoints.gif

For some backstory, see ProjPoints.gif and "Symplectic Polarity" in this journal.

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

Magical and Seductive

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:45 am

"I am trying to introduce a narrative,
something magical and seductive…."

— Oslo artist Josefine Lyche, translated
from the Norwegian by Google

Perhaps something like Arcade Fire or
Taylor Swift? (Click links for related posts.)

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Fire and Ice

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:45 am

Or: Debriefing Josefine

From the CV of Oslo artist Josefine Lyche:

Selected Collections/ Public Commissions:
2016 Jarfjord Grensevaktstasjon,
Jarfjord/Kirkenes, NO (upcoming)
 

From an Amazon.com customer review of a book on
northern Norway in World War II, Fire and Ice 

"… Hunt doesn't take sides. He approaches
the story as a journalist and documentary maker,
rather than as an academic."

The book, as the author notes, was published in Britain
on October 6, 2014.

A synchronicity check of the publication date yields 
a variation on the "Fire and Ice" theme —


____________________________

"Jeg prøver å innføre et narrativ, noe magisk og forførende,
samt erstatte den iboende materialistiske logikken med
esoterisk kosmologi og symbolikk." — Josefine Lyche

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Gitterkrieg

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 9:00 pm

(Continued from Jan. 3 and Jan. 5.) 

Introduction: "Grids, You Say?" by Josefine Lyche,
and AntiChristmas 2010:

Related material:
Chapter 42 in
A History of Graphic Design ,
by Guity Novin.

Midrash on Hexagram 22

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:30 pm

See Instantia Crucis and Josefine Lyche's
One-Night-Only exhibition in Oslo Jan. 5.

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

Core

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:11 pm

JOSEFINE LYCHE
ABSOLUTE ALT. VOL. 2
17. april – 23. mai [2015] —

"I kjernen av mitt arbeid er en pågående
utforskning av esoteriske konsepter…."

"At the core of my work is an ongoing
exploration of esoteric concepts…."

See also 
http://issuu.com/tmrk/docs/spritenkunsthall_2015_cut .

Related material:  Hard Core.

Thursday, December 4, 2014

Follow This

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:30 am

The "Phony Pony" images below by Josefine Lyche
may or may not have been created in response to the link
on "magic" in the previous post to Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" video.

Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Pyramid Dance

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:00 am

Oslo artist Josefine Lyche has a new Instagram post,
this time on pyramids (the monumental kind).

My response —

Wikipedia's definition of a tetrahedron as a
"triangle-based pyramid"

and remarks from a Log24 post of August 14, 2013 :

Norway dance (as interpreted by an American)

IMAGE- 'The geometry of the dance' is that of a tetrahedron, according to Peter Pesic

I prefer a different, Norwegian, interpretation of "the dance of four."

Related material:
The clash between square and tetrahedral versions of PG(3,2).

See also some of Burkard Polster's triangle-based pyramids
and a 1983 triangle-based pyramid in a paper that Polster cites —

(Click image below to enlarge.)

Some other illustrations that are particularly relevant
for Lyche, an enthusiast of magic :

From On Art and Magic (May 5, 2011) —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-ThemeAndVariations-Hofstadter.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-BlockDesignTheory.jpg

Mathematics

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-WikipediaFanoPlane.jpg

The Fano plane block design

Magic

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-DeathlyHallows.jpg

The Deathly Hallows  symbol—
Two blocks short of  a design.

 

(Updated at about 7 PM ET on Dec. 3.)

Saturday, October 11, 2014

Selfie Sequel

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

This post is a sequel to Pythagorean Selfie (Sept. 30, 2014)
and October Nine: Lyche at Bodø.

Today’s Instagram photos from Josefine Lyche, still at Bodø:

The figure at left appears to be diving. This suggests a review of posts on
the late film director Tony Scott.

Friday, October 10, 2014

High White Noon

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(The phrase is from Don DeLillo and Josefine Lyche.)

See “Complex Grid.”

See as well Bill O’Reilly’s remark, “Do not be a coxcomb,”
and an artist‘s self-portrait:

IMAGE- Jamie Foxx in 'Amazing Spider Man 2'

Grid Designer

Monday, October 6, 2014

Arcs and Shards

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:21 am

Ben Brantley in The New York Times  today on a Broadway opening:

“As Christopher navigates his way through an increasingly
unfamiliar landscape, both physical and emotional, the arcs
of his adventures are drawn into being.

So are the shards of sensory overload.”

Arc — See a search for Line at Infinity:

Shard — See Shard and Pythagorean Selfie:

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

Good Question

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

Related material:

Here “Lucifer’s temple” refers to Josefine Lyche’s Lynx 760 gallery in Oslo.

Mathematics for Tromsø

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 9:45 am

Loren Olson, Harvard ’64, a professor of mathematics
at Norway’s Tromsø University,* died June 22, 2014.

In his memory, a search in this journal for Lie Group.

That search yields a post titled Lie Groups for Holy Week (March 30, 2010).

A quotation related to that post:

* The city of Tromsø hosted some art related to group theory in 2010.
Neither that art nor my own related remarks on group theory are very
relevant to physics (yet).

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Pythagorean Selfie

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 5:01 pm

“Rarely is a TV show as brilliant and as terrible as Selfie .”

Kevin Fallon on a new ABC TV show that starts tonight at 8 PM ET

A recent selfie from Josefine Lyche’s Instagram page:

For some remarks related to Lyche’s pentagram, see
Lyche + Mathmagic* and also yesterday’s Michaelmas Mystery.

In today’s previous post, the late Harvey Cohn posed a question that
he said might have been asked by Pythagoras:

“It is an elementary observation that an integral right triangle
has an even area. Suppose the hypotenuse is prime.

Q.  How do we determine from the prime value of the hypotenuse
when the area is divisible by 4, 8, 16, or any higher power of 2?

A.  We use class fields constructed by means of transcendental
functions, of course!”

— From the preface to Introduction to the Construction of Class Fields ,
by Harvey Cohn (Cambridge University Press, 1985)

Illustration:

For a related song, see Prime Suspect (Dec. 13, 2007).

Footnote of 12:14 AM Oct. 1, 2014 —

* That search yields a link to…

This Lyche webpage’s pentagram  indicates an interest in Disney rather than
in SatanismOther Lyche webpages have been less reassuring.

Related material — Posts tagged Elegantly Packaged.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Theology and Art

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Recommended reading for Josefine Lyche:

See also Ayn Sof (Jan. 7, 2011).

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Oslo, 5 A.M.*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 pm

To thine own selfie be true .

* Title suggested by The Tiffany Puzzle (Dec. 7, 2010).

 

Friday, September 19, 2014

Song of Praise

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:45 pm

“Robust and compact, conforming to international standards,
the Altivar 08 is a universal product.”

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Portals

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:28 pm

Part I

Image- Josefine Lyche's work (with 1986 figures by Cullinane) in a 2009 exhibition in Oslo

Part II

Part III

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Bottom Line

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“. . . the bottom line of the grid is a naked and determined materialism.”

— Rosalind Krauss, quoted by Josefine Lyche

See also http://www.dailymotion.com/video/
x164rmi_britt-ekland-nude-wicker-man-1973_people.

Monday, August 4, 2014

The Omega Portal

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

Version from "The Avengers" (2012) —

Version from Josefine Lyche (2009) —

Image- Josefine Lyche work (with 1986 figures by Cullinane) in a 2009 exhibition in Oslo

See also this journal on the date that the above Avengers  video was uploaded.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Emperor

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“Paradigm Talent Agency are supporting with casting.

Emperor  is described as a look at a debauched world
of wealth, sex, manipulation and treason.”

The Hollywood Reporter : “Cannes: Adrien Brody
to play Charles V in Lee Tamahori‘s ‘Emperor,'”
2:54 AM PST May 19, 2014, by Scott Roxborough

Related material from Santa Cruz, California:

On or about or between 11/22/2013 and 11/24/2013….

Related material from this journal:

Fiction,” a post of St. Cecilia’s Day, 11/22/2013.

See, too, yesterday’s noon post “Nowhere” and
the April 27-28, 2013, posts tagged Around the Clock.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Aaron Eckhart Strikes Deep

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

“Even paranoids have real enemies.”

— Attributed to Delmore Schwartz

“There is a difference as to whether you are describing paranoia
or whether you in fact are paranoid yourself.”

— The late Frank Schirrmacher,  dw.de , July 2, 2013.

Schirrmacher reportedly died on Thursday, June 12, 2014.
See that date in this journal.

Paranoia is, of course, a fertile field for politicians and filmmakers:

Related material in this journal:

I, Frankenstein (May 15, 2014) and, for the Eckhart film “Erased,”
Hour of the Wolf (Nov. 9, 2006).

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Moonshine

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:56 pm

“The yarns of seamen have a direct simplicity, the whole meaning
of which lies within the shell of a cracked nut. But Marlow was not
typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted), and to him the
meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside,
enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a
haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that sometimes
are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.”

— Joseph Conrad in Heart of Darkness

Photo of full moon over Oslo last night by Josefine Lyche:

A scene from my film viewing last night:

Some background (click to enlarge):

Note:

The “I, Frankenstein” scene above should not be interpreted as
a carrying of Martin Gardner through a lyche gate.  Gardner
is, rather, symbolized by the asterisk in the first image from
the above Google search.

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Death in Mathmagic Land

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:28 pm

"It was our old friend Pythagoras who discovered
that the pentagram was full of mathematics."

— Narrator, "Donald in Mathmagic Land," Disney, 1959

… and it was Peter J. Cameron who discovered that
mathematics was full of pentagrams.

From Log24 on May 3:  Gray Space —

Robert J. Stewart (left) and a pentagram photo posted May 2
by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche. See also Lyche in this journal.

From Log24 on May 13:  An Artist's Memorial —

The death mentioned in the above May 13 post occurred on
May 12, the date of a scheduled Black Mass at Harvard.

Related material:

Two -Year College

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:45 am

See last night’s pentagram photo and a post from May 13, 2012.

That post links to a little-known video of a 1972 film.
A speech from the film was used by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche as a
voice-over in her  2011 golden-ratio video (with pentagrams) that she
exhibited along with a large, wall-filling copy of some of my own work.
The speech (see video below) is clearly nonsense.

The patterns* Lyche copied are not.

“Who are you, anyway?” 

— Question at 00:41 of 15:00, Rainbow Bridge (Part 5 of 9)
at YouTube, addressed to Baron Bingen as “Mr. Rabbit”

* Patterns exhibited again later, apparently without the Lyche pentagram video.
It turns out, by the way, that Lyche created that video by superimposing
audio from the above “Rainbow Bridge” film onto a section of Disney’s 1959
Donald in Mathmagic Land” (see 7:17 to 8:57 of the 27:33 Disney video).

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Clay

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

The title is that of a short story in Dubliners , by James Joyce.
See in that story the phrase “Grey-green eyes.”

See also the tag #greygreengrids on an Oslo artist’s photo today.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Fictions

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 2:29 pm

From The Ninth Element  website:

Cover of a Norwegian author’s forthcoming novel:

For some Norwegian non-fiction, see an Oslo artist’s Instagram page.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Gray Space

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 9:00 am

Or: Three Shades of Gray

(Continued from previous Gray Space posts.)

Cube subdivided into 8 subcubes by planes through the center

Click the above image for some related mathematics.

Those who prefer “magic” approaches to mathematics*
may consult the works of Robert J. Stewart and his
mentor William G. Gray.

Robert J. Stewart (left) and a pentagram photo posted yesterday evening
by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche. See also Lyche in this journal.

* See the April 2014 banners displayed at the websites
of the American Mathematical Society and of  the
Mathematical Association of America, as well as
a mathematician’s remarks linked to here last evening.

Friday, May 2, 2014

From the Witch Ball

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 7:00 pm

IMAGE- Arcade Fire to headline the 2014 Oslo 'Norwegian Wood' festival at Frognerparken

See also, in this journal, Arcade Fire and Witch Ball.

This post was suggested by remarks today of mathematician
Peter J. Cameron, who seems to enjoy playing the role of
Lord Summerisle (from The Wicker Man , a 1973 horror classic).

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Review

Filed under: General — m759 @ 7:28 am

Some background for a recent photo
by Josefine Lyche:

The Boys from Uruguay and Witch Ball.

The photo:

Saturday, April 26, 2014

For Two Artists of Norway

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 5:48 am

IMAGE- Conclusion of introduction to Heinrich Zimmer's 'The King and the Corpse'

See also LYNX 760 , Rubik vs. Abel, and Toying.

Friday, April 25, 2014

LYNX 760

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Josefine’s Sunday School

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:30 am

Two timely images for Oslo artist Josefine Lyche —

Backstory:  Searches for “Blazing World” and for “Josefine + Lyche + Pink
in this journal.

The image above is by a man, Brian Stauffer. Related material:

An image from today’s NY Times Sunday Book Review —

This  image is by a non-man, Kelsey Dake.

The first image above, since it combines Lyche’s enthusiasm for the color
pink and (apparently) for fishnet stockings, seems to me the better picture,
despite its prurient nature.

(Updated through 10 AM ET)

Friday, March 28, 2014

Blazing Thule

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 10:20 am

The title is suggested by a new novel (see cover below),
and by an unwritten book by Nabokov —

Siri Hustvedt, 'The Blazing World'.

Related material:

Symbol

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 am

For Josefine Lyche, by fellow artist  Nuno Borges:

Related material:

Recent remarks by Lyche and
a recurring image from this journal.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Her

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 am

IMAGE- Siri, the Apple personal assistant, as defined at Wikipedia

The name Siri is Norwegian, meaning
‘beautiful woman who leads you to victory.'”

I prefer Josefine.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

HaShem

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:30 pm

IMAGE- Josefine Lyche changes her Facebook cover photo to a form of the Tetragrammaton.

From New World Encyclopedia —

See also Tetragrammaton in this journal.

For further context, see Solomon's Cube and Oct. 16, 2013.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Proofs

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

For Oslo artist Josefine Lyche, who sometimes
seems to think my work resembles that of the
deranged Anthony Hopkins in the film of David
Auburn's play "Proof."

See another artist's images of Hopkins-like work
I just discovered online —

"The Proof," by David Colosi.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Epiphany

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:00 pm

“… the object sets up a kind of 
 frame or space or field 
 within which there can be epiphany.”

Charles Taylor

A frame or space or field —

IMAGE- The ninefold square

Related material —

Star Wars (January 11, 2014),

The Lyche Gate Asterisk , from 10:31 AM ET on May 22, 2010,
the date of Martin Gardner's death —

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

— and the March 2014 issue of the
Notices of the American Mathematical Society  —

See as well Epiphany 2014 (Jan. 6) in this journal and the
March Notices  on the Shaw prize —

"Established under the auspices of Run Run Shaw
in November 2002, the prize is managed and
administered by the Shaw Prize Foundation
based in Hong Kong." 

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Mystery Box

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 1:13 pm

In honor of the tenth anniversary of Facebook

Viewed in the Chrome browser, a Facebook post from
January 29, 2014, displays an artist's Mystery Box*

IMAGE- Josefine Lyche, Facebook post with the blank-box symbol for an unidentified character

In the Internet Explorer browser, the mystery is solved:

Further details —


 

Related material — Lyche + Geometry in this journal.

See also the cat and triangle pictured by David Justice yesterday

 .

* A phrase of filmmaker J.J. Abrams. Click the link 
   for further details. See also a mystery box 
   in The New York Times  on June 2, 2011.

Friday, January 31, 2014

Diamond Star

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

From The Diamond and the Star ,  by John Warden*
(London, Shepheard-Walwyn Ltd.,  June 1, 2009) —

(The quotation is from Kipling's "The Conundrum of the Workshops.")

IMAGE- The Devil's question - 'It's pretty, but is it Art?'

Answer — Some would say "Yes."

Part I: From a search for "Diamond Star" in this journal —

The Diamond Star

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110905-StellaOctangulaView.jpg

Part II: From the Facebook photos of Oslo artist Josefine Lyche—

* Obituary link, added at 10:45 PM ET Jan. 31 after reading  a publisher's note 
  saying that "The author sadly died before the book was published."

  Perhaps sadly, perhaps not.

Thursday, December 19, 2013

Review

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

For Josefine Lyche, artist of High White Noon —

Thursday, October 10, 2013

Mr. Noon

Filed under: Uncategorized — m759 @ 12:00 PM 

Excerpt from 'Mr. Noon,' by D.H. Lawrence

See also "Finishing Up at Noon," "S in a Diamond," and "Beyond: Two Souls."

Monday, November 25, 2013

A Tune for Josefine*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

From the New York Times  obituary of philanthropist
Fred Kavli, who died on Thursday, November 21

” In 2005, when Mr. Kavli announced that
he planned to start the prizes, he recalled
skiing in the Norwegian mountains as a boy.

‘At times,’ he told a gathering in New York,
‘the whole sky was aflame with the Northern Lights
shifting and dancing across the sky down to the
white-clad mountaintops. In the stillness and
loneliness of the white mountains, I pondered the
universe, the planet, nature and the wonders of
man. I’m still pondering.’ “

“And we may see the meadow in December, icy white
and crystalline….” — Johnny Mercer, lyrics to Lionel
Hampton and Sonny Burke’s “Midnight Sun

* Lyche

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Theme and Variations

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 6:16 pm

(Continued)

IMAGE- The Diamond Theorem

Josefine Lyche’s large wall version of the twenty-four 2×2 variations
above was apparently offered for sale today in Norway —

Click image for more details and click here for a translation.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

To Apollo*

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:06 pm

From Log24

From Josefine Lyche's website —

* For the title, see Apollo + Outram in this journal.

 

Sunday, October 6, 2013

Sermon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

A sequel to last night's "For Baron Samedi" —

Sigils

The music in the trailer for the new film "American Hustle"
is a 1969 tune by Led Zeppelin.  This, together with the
magick sigils posted at Facebook yesterday by artist
Josefine Lyche, suggests a review of Zeppelin sigils
from a 1971 album. These are, as shown above on a
record label,  the personal symbols of the four musicians
in the band. Two of the symbols may, of course, be
interpreted as representing the Holy Trinity.

Saturday, October 5, 2013

For Baron Samedi

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:00 pm

IMAGE- Symbol in an Arcade Fire video from Haiti

Click on the image for a video.

See also Josefine Lyche's "Grids, you say?"

I prefer Lyche's versions of the diagonal
3×3 grid. Her versions have no lettering.

(This post was suggested by a photo of magical sigils 
that Lyche posted a few hours ago at Facebook.
The above seems to be another such sigil that may
or may not be intended to function like those posted
today by Lyche.)

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Frame Tale

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:24 pm

From an academic's website:

IMAGE- Remarks by Paul Hertz, alias Ignotus the Mage

For Josefine Lyche and Ignotus the Mage,
as well as Rose the Hat and other Zingari shoolerim —

Sabbatha hanti, lodsam hanti, cahanna risone hanti :
words that had been old when the True Knot moved
across Europe in wagons, selling peat turves and trinkets.
They had probably been old when Babylon was young.
The girl was powerful, but the True was all-powerful,
and Rose anticipated no real problem.

— King, Stephen (2013-09-24).
     Doctor Sleep: A Novel
     (pp. 278-279). Scribner. Kindle Edition. 

From a post of November 10, 2008:

Twenty-four Variations on a Theme of Plato

Twenty-four Variations on a Theme of Plato,
a version by Barry Sharples based on the earlier
kaleidoscope puzzle  version of Steven H. Cullinane

The King and the Corpse  —

"The king asked, in compensation for his toils
during this strangest of all the nights he had
ever known, that the twenty-four riddle tales
told him by the specter, together with the story
of the night itself, should be made known
over the whole earth and remain eternally
famous among men."

Frame Tale: 

Finnegans Wake  —

"The quad gospellers may own the targum
but any of the Zingari shoolerim may pick a peck
of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne."

Monday, September 30, 2013

A Line for Frank

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

(Continued from High White Noon
Finishing Up at Noon, and A New York Jew.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101008-StartingOut.jpg

Above: Frank Langella in "Starting Out in the Evening"

Below: Frank Langella and Johnny Depp in "The Ninth Gate"

"Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin."

IMAGE- Author's shirt with a Dharma Logo from 'Lost'

Above: Detail from a Wikipedia photo.

For the logo, see Lostpedia.

For some backstory, see Noether.

Those seeking an escape from the eightfold nightmare
represented by the Dharma logo above may consult
the remarks of Heisenberg (the real one, not the
Breaking Bad  version) to the Bavarian Academy
of Fine Arts.

Those who prefer Plato's cave to his geometry are
free to continue their Morphean adventures.

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Church with Josefine

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 11:30 am

Today, beginning at about 11 AM ET, I checked out
the latest news from Oslo artist Josefine Lyche,
often mentioned in these posts.

Lyche's Facebook page has a new cover photo—
geometric diagrams from Order in Space , a 1969
book by Keith Critchlow.

A search for more information on Critchlow yielded
information on his friend the impressive Kathleen Raine,
who reportedly died at 95 on July 6, 2003.

See also references to that date in this journal.

From Raine's obituary in The Guardian :

"When asked how she wished people
to remember her, Kathleen Raine said
she would rather they didn't. Or that
Blake's words be said of her: 'That in
time of trouble, I kept the divine vision.' "

Monday, September 9, 2013

Viking Book

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:00 pm

For the late Billy Wilder, director of Ace in the Hole  (1951)

IMAGE- Book by Halvor Bodin on the art of Josefine Lyche and others. See halvorbodin.com.

Click image for a larger version.

See, too, this morning's quarter-to-three post, and The Vikings  (1958)—

The art by Josefine Lyche in the Bodin book shown 
above is, as the artist notes, based on my own work.

Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Noir sur Blanc

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

IMAGE- Playwright's death announced by his publisher, Noir sur Blanc

Some backstory for this post's title—

IMAGE- 'Iron Sky'- The Nazis set up a secret base on the dark side of the moon.

A post from the day of Mrozek's death may also be relevant—

I have a nightmare.

Wednesday, August 14, 2013

ART WARS

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 11:00 am

(Continued from 24 hours ago and from May 9, 2012)

Quoted 24 hours ago in this journal—

Remark by Aldous Huxley on an artist's work:

"All the turmoil, all the emotions of the scenes
have been digested by the mind into a
grave intellectual whole."

Quoted in a video uploaded on May 9, 2012:

Norway Toilet Scene
IMAGE- Privy scene from 'Headhunters'

Norway dance (as interpreted by an American)

IMAGE- 'The geometry of the dance' is that of a tetrahedron, according to Peter Pesic

I prefer a different, Norwegian, interpretation of "the dance of four."

Related material: The clash between square and tetrahedral versions of PG(3,2).

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Plan 9

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 11:00 am

(Continued from August 28 last year)

Backstory— 

Reflections from today's date, August 13, in 2003, that included
the following remark by Aldous Huxley on an artist's work:

"All the turmoil, all the emotions of the scenes
have been digested by the mind into a
grave intellectual whole. It is as though
Bach had written the 1812 Overture."

Related art—

Josefine Lyche, from her 2013 Crackquarelle  series:

IMAGE- From the 2013 Josefine Lyche 'Crackquarelle' series

Steven H. Cullinane, The Story of N ,
from The Misalignment of Mars and Venus series:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110720-Misaligned.jpg

See, too, previous posts on The Story of N.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Comic-Con

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 5:18 am

This is the weekend for Comic-Con International in San Diego.

The convention includes an art show. (Click above image to enlarge.)

Related material from Norway

IMAGE- The Kavli Prize logo, a Metatron cube

Suggested nominations for a Kavli Prize:

1.  Josefine Lyche's highly imaginative catalog page for
the current Norwegian art exhibition I de lange nætter,
​which mentions her interest in sacred geometry

2.  Sacred Geometry:  Drawing a Metatron Cube
 

and from San Diego

The Kavli Institutes logo:

IMAGE- Logo of the Kavli institutes

Wednesday, July 10, 2013

Diagon Alley

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:29 pm

You say goodbye, I say

A YouTube video uploaded on March 2, 2012—

This  journal on the date of the above video's uploading— March 2, 2012:

"…des carreaux mi-partis de deux couleurs par une ligne diagonale…."

See also Josefine Lyche in Vril Chick and Bowling in Diagon Alley.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

Vril Chick

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 4:30 am

Profile picture of "Jo Lyxe" (Josefine Lyche) at Vimeo

Profile picture for "Jo Lyxe" (Josefine Lyche) at Vimeo

Compare to an image of Vril muse Maria Orsitsch.

From the catalog of a current art exhibition
(25 May – 31 August, 2013) in Norway,
I DE LANGE NÆTTER —

Josefine Lyche
Born in 1973 in Bergen, Norway.
Lives and works in Oslo and Berlin.

Keywords (to help place my artwork in the
proper context): Aliens, affine geometry, affine
planes, affine spaces, automorphisms, binary
codes, block designs, classical groups, codes,
coding theory, collineations, combinatorial,
combinatorics, conjugacy classes, the Conwell
correspondence, correlations, Cullinane,
R. T. Curtis, design theory, the diamond theorem,
diamond theory, duads, duality, error correcting
codes, esoteric, exceptional groups,
extraterrestrials, finite fields, finite geometry, finite
groups, finite rings, Galois fields, generalized
quadrangles, generators, geometry, GF(2),
GF(4), the (24,12) Golay code, group actions,
group theory, Hadamard matrices, hypercube,
hyperplanes, hyperspace, incidence structures,
invariance, Karnaugh maps, Kirkman’s schoolgirls
problem, Latin squares, Leech lattice, linear
groups, linear spaces, linear transformations,
Magick, Mathieu groups, matrix theory, Meno,
Miracle Octad Generator, MOG, multiply transitive
groups, occultism, octahedron, the octahedral
group, Orsic, orthogonal arrays, outer automorphisms,
parallelisms, partial geometries,
permutation groups, PG(3,2), Plato, Platonic
solids, polarities, Polya-Burnside theorem, projective
geometry, projective planes, projective
spaces, projectivities, Pythagoras, reincarnation,
Reed-Muller codes, the relativity problem,
reverse engineering, sacred geometry, Singer
cycle, skew lines, Socrates, sporadic simple
groups, Steiner systems, Sylvester, symmetric,
symmetry, symplectic, synthemes, synthematic,
Theosophical Society tesseract, Tessla, transvections,
Venn diagrams, Vril society, Walsh
functions, Witt designs.

(See also the original catalog page.)

Clearly most of this (the non-highlighted parts) was taken
from my webpage Diamond Theory. I suppose I should be
flattered, but I am not thrilled to be associated with the
(apparently fictional) Vril Society.

For some background, see (for instance) 
Conspiracy Theories and Secret Societies for Dummies .

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Random Dudes

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 pm

Here is the link to an MIT Scratch project from the above comment.

See also a comment by a Random Norwegian Dude:

For related art, see 
"4D AMBASSADOR (HYPERCUBE)" for Steven H. Cullinane
by the Norwegian artist Josefine Lyche.

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Slow Art

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

IMAGE- Details from Josefine Lyche's installation 'Grids, You Say?'

See also Slow Art in this journal
and posts of the past 24 hours.

Red October’s Sermon

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:30 am

For the Harvard Arts Weekend:

"Grids, You Say?" by Josefine Lyche, with
Lyche's quotation from Rosalind Krauss in October
(Vol. 9, Summer 1979) —

IMAGE- 'Grids, You Say?' by Josefine Lyche, with Lyche's quotation of Rosalind Krauss

See also last evening's Elevation of the Host, with Vampire Weekend.

"For every kind of vampire, there is a kind of cross." — Gravity's Rainbow

Friday, April 26, 2013

Review

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 11:00 am

The Oslo Version and The Lyche Omega

Those who prefer more traditional art 
may consult The Portal Project.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Smoke and Mirrors

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 7:00 am

Sistine Chapel Smoke

Tromso Kunsthall Mirrors

Background for the smoke  image:
A remark by Michelangelo in a 2007 post,  High Concept.

Background for the mirrors  image:
Note the publication date— Mar. 10, 2013.

See that date in this journal and related material.

Friday, November 9, 2012

Norway High Chair

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

This post was suggested by today's previous post,
"Bali High Chair," that links to an empty chair award for
evangelical supporters of Mitt Romney, by Bauhaus style,
and by the example of Norwegian  design shown below—

(Happy Frigg's Day to Josefine Lyche.)

Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Love Ghost

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 2:45 am

Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story

is the title of an August 30, 2012, biography
of the late author David Foster Wallace. 
(See a Guardian  review.)

For example…

The Lovely Bones,  Telemark, and  Behind the Green Door.

“I have to break in my new suit
and limber up my muscles somehow,”
said Penny defensively. “One can’t
practice outdoors when there’s no snow.
Now watch this one, Mrs. Weems.
It’s called a telemark.”

Friday, October 19, 2012

Inconvenient Art

Filed under: General — m759 @ 6:00 pm

Barry Schwabsky in The Nation  on October 16, 2012:

"… sculpture is the most inconvenient of the fine arts.
Tedious physical labor is often involved in its making—
not necessarily the artist’s, but still, someone’s."

Happy Frigg's Day to Josefine Lyche.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

High White in the Dark Fields

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"High white noon"

— Phrase of Don DeLillo and Josefine Lyche

"Spellbinding visuals dwarf weak characters."

Fox News review of Snow White and the Huntsman

For some stronger characters, see Limitless , a 2011 film 
based on a 2001 novel by Alan Glynn, The Dark Fields .

See also St. Andrew's Day 2011 in this journal.

Sunday, September 23, 2012

Plan 9 (continued)–

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

In Like Flynn

From the Wall Street Journal  site Friday evening—

ESSAY September 21, 2012, 9:10 p.m. ET

Are We Really Getting Smarter?

Americans’ IQ scores have risen steadily over the past century.
James R. Flynn examines why.

IMAGE- Raven's Progressive Matrices problem with ninth configuration a four-diamonds grid

No, thank you. I prefer the ninth configuration as is—

IMAGE- Four-diamonds grid, the ninth configuration in a Raven's Progressive Matrices problem

Why? See Josefine Lyche’s art installation “Grids, you say?

Her reference there to “High White Noon” is perhaps
related to the use of that phrase in this journal.

The phrase is from a 2010 novel by Don DeLillo.
See “Point Omega,” as well as Lyche’s “Omega Point,”
in this journal.

The Wall Street Journal  author above, James R. Flynn (born in 1934),
“is famous for his discovery of the Flynn effect, the continued
year-after-year increase of IQ scores in all parts of the world.”
Wikipedia

His son Eugene Victor Flynn is a mathematician, co-author
of the following chapter on the Kummer surface— 

For use of the Kummer surface in Buddhist metaphysics, see last night’s
post “Occupy Space (continued)” and the letters of Nanavira Thera from the
late 1950s at nanavira.blogspot.com.

These letters, together with Lyche’s use of the phrase “high white noon,”
suggest a further quotation

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I was to say to you
Girl, we couldn’t get much higher

See also the Kummer surface at the web page Configurations and Squares.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

4D Ambassador

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 1:00 pm

IMAGE- '4D Ambassador (Hypercube), 2012' by Josefine Lyche at The Boiler Room Gallery in Oslo

Friday, June 29, 2012

Highgate

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:30 pm

A non-Lyche* gate

Part of the Andrew Amesbury series Archway to Highgate.

* See Lyche gate  in this journal.

Happy feast of Saints Peter and Paul.

Friday, June 22, 2012

Bowling in Diagon Alley

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:28 am

IMAGE- Josefine Lyche bowling, from her Facebook page

Josefine Lyche bowling (Facebook, June 12, 2012)

"Where Does Math Come From?"

A professor of philosophy in 1984 on Socrates's geometric proof in Plato's Meno  dialogue—

"These recondite issues matter because theories about mathematics have had a big place in Western philosophy. All kinds of outlandish doctrines have tried to explain the nature of mathematical knowledge. Socrates set the ball rolling…."

— Ian Hacking in The New York Review of Books , Feb. 16, 1984

The same professor introducing a new edition of Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions

"Paradigms Regained" (Los Angeles Review of Books , April 18, 2012)—

"That is the structure of scientific revolutions: normal science with a paradigm and a dedication to solving puzzles; followed by serious anomalies, which lead to a crisis; and finally resolution of the crisis by a new paradigm. Another famous word does not occur in the section titles: incommensurability. This is the idea that, in the course of a revolution and paradigm shift, the new ideas and assertions cannot be strictly compared to the old ones."

The Meno  proof involves inscribing diagonals  in squares. It is therefore related, albeit indirectly, to the classic Greek discovery that the diagonals of a square are incommensurable  with its sides. Hence the following discussion of incommensurability seems relevant.

IMAGE- Von Fritz in 1945 on incommensurability and the tetractys (10 as a triangular number)

See also von Fritz and incommensurability in The New York Times  (March 8, 2011).

For mathematical remarks related to the 10-dot triangular array of von Fritz, diagonals, and bowling, see this  journal on Nov. 8, 2011— "Stoned."

Monday, May 21, 2012

Child’s Play (continued*)

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 7:59 pm

You and I …

we are just like a couple of tots…

Sinatra

JOSEFINE LYCHE

Born 1973 in Bergen. Lives and works in Oslo.

Education

2000 – 2004 National Academy of Fine Arts, Oslo
1998 – 2000 Strykejernet Art School, Oslo, NO
1995 – 1998 Philosophy, University of Bergen

University of Bergen—

 It might therefore seem that the idea of digital and analogical systems as rival fundaments to human experience is a new suggestion and, like digital technology, very modern. In fact, however, the idea is as old as philosophy itself (and may be much older). In his Sophist, Plato sets out the following ‘battle’ over the question of ‘true reality’:

What we shall see is something like a battle of gods and giants going on between them over their quarrel about reality [γιγαντομαχία περì της ουσίας] ….One party is trying to drag everything down to earth out of heaven and the unseen, literally grasping rocks and trees in their hands, for they lay hold upon every stock and stone and strenuously affirm that real existence belongs only to that which can be handled and offers resistance to the touch. They define reality as the same thing as body, and as soon as one of the opposite party asserts that anything without a body is real, they are utterly contemptuous and will not listen to another word. (…) Their adversaries are very wary in defending their position somewhere in the heights of the unseen, maintaining with all their force that true reality [την αληθινήν ουσίαν] consists in certain intelligible and bodiless forms. In the clash of argument they shatter and pulverize those bodies which their opponents wield, and what those others allege to be true reality they call, not real being, but a sort of moving process of becoming. On this issue an interminable battle is always going on between the two camps [εν μέσω δε περι ταυτα απλετος αμφοτέρων μάχη τις (…) αει συνέστηκεν]. (…) It seems that only one course is open to the philosopher who values knowledge and truth above all else. He must refuse to accept from the champions of the forms the doctrine that all reality is changeless [and exclusively immaterial], and he must turn a deaf ear to the other party who represent reality as everywhere changing [and as only material]. Like a child begging for 'both', he must declare that reality or the sum of things is both at once [το όν τε και το παν συναμφότερα] (Sophist 246a-249d).

The gods and the giants in Plato’s battle present two varieties of the analog position. Each believes that ‘true reality’ is singular, that "real existence belongs only to" one side or other of competing possibilities. For them, difference and complexity are secondary and, as secondary, deficient in respect to truth, reality and being (την αληθινήν ουσίαν, το όν τε και το παν). Difference and complexity are therefore matters of "interminable battle" whose intended end for each is, and must be (given their shared analogical logic), only to eradicate the other. The philosophical child, by contrast, holds to ‘both’ and therefore represents the digital position where the differentiated two yet belong originally together. Here difference, complexity and systematicity are primary and exemplary.

It is an unfailing mark of the greatest thinkers of the tradition, like Plato, that they recognize the digital possibility and therefore recognize the principal difference of it from analog possibilities.

— Cameron McEwen, "The Digital Wittgenstein,"
    The Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen

* See that phrase in this journal.

Sunday, May 13, 2012

Children of Light*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:28 am

IMAGE- Nassau Presbyterian scripture for May 13, 2012- 1 John 5:1-5.

An earlier verse in 1 John—

1 John 1:5 "This then is the message
which we have heard of him,
and declare unto you, that God is light,
and in him is no darkness at all."

Catechism from a different cult—

"Who are you, anyway?" 

— Question at 00:41 of 15:01,
Rainbow Bridge (Part 5 of 9) at YouTube

See also the video accompanying artist Josefine Lyche's version
of the 2×2 case of the diamond theorem.

* Title of a Robert Stone novel

Friday, May 11, 2012

For Frigg’s Day

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:30 am

A Parting Glance

(See also Josefine Lyche, Lens Flare.)

Friday, April 27, 2012

References

Filed under: General — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"These lowbrow, popular cultural references bring the possibilities
of interpretation down to an everyday level, forcing us to acknowledge
that not every painting that looks like a splatter is necessarily a
homage/anti-homage to Jackson Pollock."

— Stina Högqvist, review of the art of Josefine Lyche

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Rainbow Bridge for Thor’s Day

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

(Not  necessarily for Rainbow People )

About the artist—

Monday, March 26, 2012

Smackdown!

Filed under: General — m759 @ 2:00 pm

(The title is a nod to Peter Woit's recent post "Nothingness Smackdown.")

"To wrestle new mediums to the mat of specificity has been a preoccupation of mine since the inception of October , the magazine I founded in 1976 with Annette Michelson, the first issue of which carried my essay 'Video and Narcissism' which attempts to tie the essence of video to the spectacular nature of mirrors."

Rosalind Krauss, 2008, introduction to Perpetual Inventory  (MIT Press, 2010)

Related material— The video art and mirror art of Josefine Lyche.

See also Krauss's essay on video in Perpetual Inventory—  "Video: The Aesthetics of Narcissism" (first published as "Video and Narcissism," October , no. 1 (Spring 1976))—

"In The Language of the Self , Lacan begins by characterizing the space of the therapeutic transaction as an extraordinary void created by the silence of the analyst. Into this void the patient projects the monologue of his own recitation, which Lacan calls 'the monumental construct of his narcissism.'"

— and related remarks on October  and the void quoted here March 10 in "Boo Boo Boo."

Monday, March 5, 2012

For the Nine Muses

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

From "The Talented," a post of April 26, 2011—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110426-ApolloAndDionysus.jpg

And for Josefine Lyche

Unity in Multiplicity —

Pink  in Wikipedia

Sunday, March 4, 2012

The Haunted Galaxy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

(Continued from Big Art 1 PM EST yesterday)

'IMAGE- The Galaxy has been haunted by ugly colours for centuries'- Josefine Lyche, 2001 video

In related news…

Ralph McQuarrie, who designed the Star Wars  trilogy, died yesterday.

See also Haunting Time.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

Big Art

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

For Women's History Month—

The Beam of Pink Light

Beam of pink light in Philip K. Dick's 'VALIS'

Video by Josefine Lyche ('Jo Lyxe')

From a post linked to on Lyxe's upload date, Feb. 6, 2012

“… with primitives the beginnings of art, science, and religion
coalesce in the undifferentiated chaos of the magical mentality….”

— Carl G. Jung, “On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry,”
     Collected Works, Vol. 15, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature,
     Princeton University Press, 1966, excerpted in
    Twentieth Century Theories of Art, edited by James M. Thompson.

See also the NY Lottery for St. Luke's Day, 2011, publication date
of the new edition of Philip K. Dick's VALIS  quoted above.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

Grids

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 3:17 pm

See Notes for a Haiku.

Related material—

A novel published on Groundhog Day, 2010—

IMAGE- 'Point Omega' by DeLillo

— as well as Conceptual Art, Josefine Lyche's
"Grids, You Say?" and The Speed of Thought.

Saturday, January 7, 2012

Number and Form

Filed under: General — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:09 am

A link for Josefine Lyche in memory of Anne Tyng.

Thursday, December 22, 2011

The Speed of Thought

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 4:18 am

"As if an apparently meaningless frame of reference,
traveling at the speed of thought, suddenly became relevant…."

— Stephen Rachman, "Lost in Translation"

Unclean Frame

IMAGE- The perception of doors in the film 'Sunshine Cleaning'

Detail from the film "Sunshine Cleaning"

Clean Frame

IMAGE- Part of 'Grids, You Say?' installation by Josefine Lyche

See also Psychic Art and "The Speed of Thought."

For another form of psychic art, see Game of Shadows.

Monday, December 5, 2011

The Shining (Norwegian Version)

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 4:01 am

A check tonight of Norwegian artist Josefine Lyche's recent activities
shows she has added a video to her web page that has for some time
contained a wall piece based on the 2×2 case of the diamond theorem

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyche-DiamondTheoremPage.jpg

The video (top left in screenshot above) is a tasteless New-Age discourse
that sounds frighteningly like the teachings of the late Heaven's Gate cult.

Investigating the source of the video on vimeo.com, I found the account of one "Jo Lyxe,"
who joined vimeo in September 2011. This is apparently a variant of Josefine Lyche's name.

The account has three videos—

  1. "High on RAM (OverLoad)"– Fluid running through a computer's innards
  2. "Death 2 Everyone"– A mystic vision of the afterlife
  3. "Realization of the Ultimate Reality (Beyond Form)"– The Blue Star video above

Lyche has elsewhere discussed her New-Age interests, so the contents of the videos
were not too surprising… except for one thing. Vimeo.com states that all three videos
were uploaded "2 months ago"— apparently when "Lyxe" first set up an account.*

I do not know, or particularly care, where she got the Blue Star video, but the other
videos interested me considerably when I found them tonight… since they are
drawn from films I discussed in this journal much more recently than "2 months ago."

"High on RAM (OverLoad)" is taken from the 1984 film "Electric Dreams" that I came across
and discussed here yesterday afternoon, well before  re-encountering it again tonight.

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyxe-HighOnRam.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-ElectricDreamsTrailer.jpg

And "Death 2 Everyone" (whose title** is perhaps a philosophical statement about inevitable mortality
rather than a mad terrorist curse) is taken from the 1983 Natalie Wood film "Brainstorm."

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Lyxe-Death2.jpg

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11C/111205-Brainstorm-FreakyPart.jpg

"Brainstorm" was also discussed here recently… on November 18th, in a post suggested by the
reopening of the investigation into Wood's death.

I had no inkling that these "Jo Lyxe" videos existed until tonight.

The overlapping content of Lyche's mental ramblings and my own seems rather surprising.
Perhaps it is a Norwegian mind-meld, perhaps just a coincidence of interests.

* Update: Google searches by the titles  on Dec. 5 show that all three "Lyxe" videos
                 were uploaded on September 20 and 21, 2011.

** Update: A search shows a track with this title on a Glasgow band's 1994 album.

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Grids

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

For those who think "right-brain" means something—

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Endings

Filed under: General — m759 @ 8:00 pm

IMAGE- American Mathematical Society obituaries for Patrick C. Fischer and Frank Birtel published Sept. 8, 2011

For Fischer's fellow database enthusiast Codd, see Cross-Referenced (April 24, 2003).

For Birtel's fellow pseudoscience enthusiast Frank Tipler, see the artist's comment linked to in Romancing the Omega (April 19, 2011)—

"Omega Point" is a term used by mathematical physicist Frank Tipler for what he maintains is the ultimate fate of the universe required by the laws of physics."

Josefine Lyche, 2009

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Norway Summer

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:00 pm

(Continued from June 21)

Footnote to a new web page from the European Culture Congress—

Photo credit: Josefine Lyche, “The 2×2 Case (Diamond Theorem)
after Steven H. Cullinane”, 450 x 650 cm,
Tromsø Kunstforening, 2010, image courtesy: the artist.

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Midnight in Oslo

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 6:00 pm

For Norway's Niels Henrik Abel (1802-1829)
on his birthday, August Fifth

(6 PM Aug. 4, Eastern Time, is 12 AM Aug. 5 in Oslo.)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110804-Pesic-PlatosDiamond.jpg

Plato's Diamond

The above version by Peter Pesic is from Chapter I of his book Abel's Proof , titled "The Scandal of the Irrational." Plato's diamond also occurs in a much later mathematical story that might be called "The Scandal of the Noncontinuous." The story—

Paradigms

"These passages suggest that the Form is a character or set of characters common to a number of things, i.e. the feature in reality which corresponds to a general word. But Plato also uses language which suggests not only that the forms exist separately (χωριστά ) from all the particulars, but also that each form is a peculiarly accurate or good particular of its own kind, i.e. the standard particular of the kind in question or the model (παράδειγμα ) [i.e. paradigm ] to which other particulars approximate….

… Both in the Republic  and in the Sophist  there is a strong suggestion that correct thinking is following out the connexions between Forms. The model is mathematical thinking, e.g. the proof given in the Meno  that the square on the diagonal is double the original square in area."

– William and Martha Kneale, The Development of Logic , Oxford University Press paperback, 1985

Plato's paradigm in the Meno

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110217-MenoFigure16bmp.bmp

Changed paradigm in the diamond theorem (2×2 case) —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110217-MenoFigureColored16bmp.bmp

Aspects of the paradigm change—

Monochrome figures to
   colored figures

Areas to
   transformations

Continuous transformations to
   non-continuous transformations

Euclidean geometry to
   finite geometry

Euclidean quantities to
   finite fields

The 24 patterns resulting from the paradigm change—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110805-The24.jpg

Each pattern has some ordinary or color-interchange symmetry.

This is the 2×2 case of a more general result. The patterns become more interesting in the 4×4 case. For their relationship to finite geometry and finite fields, see the diamond theorem.

Related material: Plato's Diamond by Oslo artist Josefine Lyche.

Plato’s Ghost  evokes Yeats’s lament that any claim to worldly perfection inevitably is proven wrong by the philosopher’s ghost….”

— Princeton University Press on Plato’s Ghost: The Modernist Transformation of Mathematics  (by Jeremy Gray, September 2008)

"Remember me to her."

— Closing words of the Algis Budrys novel Rogue Moon .

Background— Some posts in this journal related to Abel or to random thoughts from his birthday.

Friday, July 8, 2011

Baudelaire, Your Shiny Friend

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 8:48 pm

Google Translate version of a recent Norwegian art review

Josefine Lyche show is working on the basis of crop circles occur in Pewsey, Wiltshire in England for exactly one year ago on 21 June. Three circulars forms of aluminum quote forms from the field in England. With this as a starting point invites Lyche viewer to explore the sacred shapes and patterns through painting, floor work and sculpture. In the monumental painting "Wisdom Luxury Romance" draws Lyche lines to both Matisse and Baudelaire in his poem "L'invitation au voyage ."

From the artist's website, JosefineLyche.com

Click to enlarge

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110708-WISDOM_LUXURY_ROMANCE-500W.jpg

WISDOM LUXURY ROMANCE

From elsewhere—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110708-Alcoa_Logo.jpg

Related material

From Antichristmas 2002— Aluminum, Your Shiny Friend.

From Sept. 22, 2004— Tribute… in the context of
today's previous entry  and of the conclusion of the story
that later became Childhood's End

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11B/110708-ClarkeSm.jpg

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Summer in Norway

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:32 am

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110621-LycheWhiteout.jpg

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Asterisk*

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:30 am

A year ago today—

2:02 AM EDT

   Art Space

Box symbol

Pictorial version
of Hexagram 20,
Contemplation (View)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100522-Clouseau.gif

Space: what you damn well have to see.
– James Joyce, Ulysses

10:31 AM EDT

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

* See Vonnegut.

Thursday, May 5, 2011

On Art and Magic

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 10:30 pm

Two Blocks Short of a Design:

A sequel to this morning’s post on Douglas Hofstadter

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-ThemeAndVariations-Hofstadter.jpg

Photo of Hofstadter by Mike McGrath taken May 13, 2006

Related material — See Lyche’s  “Theme and Variations” in this journal
and Hofstadter’s “Variations on a Theme as the Essence of Imagination
Scientific American  October 1982

A quotation from a 1985 book by Hofstadter—

“… we need to entice people with the beauties of clarity, simplicity, precision,
elegance, balance, symmetry, and so on.

Those artistic qualities… are the things that I have tried to explore and even
to celebrate in Metamagical Themas .  (It is not for nothing that the word
‘magic’ appears inside the title!)”

The artistic qualities Hofstadter lists are best sought in mathematics, not in magic.

An example from Wikipedia —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-BlockDesignTheory.jpg

Mathematics

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-WikipediaFanoPlane.jpg

The Fano plane block design

Magic

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11A/110505-DeathlyHallows.jpg

The Deathly Hallows  symbol—
Two blocks short of  a design.

Wednesday, April 20, 2011

ART WARS continued

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 pm

Part I— A Naples, Florida obituary for artist Robert Vickrey, who died Sunday.
            (See also this evening's earlier post Soul Art.)

Part II— "Stairway to Heaven," by Vickrey

Part III— Definition of "cornette"

Part IV— Recent photo of artist Josefine Lyche

Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Romancing the Omega

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 12:25 pm

Today's news from Oslo suggests a review—

Image- Josefine Lyche work (with 1986 figures by Cullinane) in a 2009 exhibition in Oslo

Click for further details.

The circular sculpture in the foreground
is called by the artist "The Omega Point."
This has been described as
"a portal that leads in or out of time and space."

Some related philosophical remarks—

Oslo Connection and some notes on Galois connections.

Friday, March 11, 2011

Now Lens

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:00 am

A Story in Pictures

Errol Morris in The New York Times  on March 9

"If everything is incommensurable, then everything is seen through the lens of the present, the lens of now ."

"Borges concluded by quoting Chesterton, 'there is nothing more frightening than a labyrinth that has no center.' [72]"

Now Lens

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-NowLens.jpg

Uncertified Copy

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-UncertifiedCopy.jpg

Del Toro

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-delToro.jpg

Plato's Diamond

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-LychePlatosDiamond256w.jpg

Portrait of an Artist

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-JosefineLyche.jpg

Meanwhile, back at the Times

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110311-CertifiedCopy.jpg

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Now Lens (continued)

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:48 am

"…the farther back we manage to wiggle
 the more we need the loan of a lens…." —Finnegans Wake

For some background on the lens below, see the sermon on February 20th, 2011.

Image-- The Asterisk of Evil

Finnegans Wake

“The quad gospellers may own the targum but any of the Zingari shoolerim
 may pick a peck of kindlings yet from the sack of auld hensyne.”

The above "Zingari shoolerim" passage was quoted here in Frame Tales (November 10th, 2008).

That post concerned the Heinrich Zimmer tale "The King and the Corpse." Some related material—

http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110224-CorpseRiddle.jpg

Sunday, February 20, 2011

Sermon

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 10:30 am

From Galleri MGM in Oslo —

IMAGE- 'PRESS RELEASE' headline

Josefine Lyche
Theme and Variations
26. February – 28. March 2009
Opening reception 26. February 19.00 – 21.00

"Why do we remember the past, but not the future?"
Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, Ch. 9, "The Arrow of Time"

"If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever."
George Orwell

Galleri MGM is pleased to present the second solo exhibition by Josefine Lyche (b.1973).

Lyche presents a body of work consisting of sculptures and a wall painting, as well as a series of new paperwork, all using geometrical abstractions and light as a medium. Her work dissolves boundaries between fiction and documentation, depicting how fantasies and dreams collide with and yet help determine the shape of reality.

Theme and variations is a term most commonly used in the music genre as a musical form in which the fundamental musical idea, or theme, is repeated in altered form or accompanied in a different manner.

The exhibition explores geometric shapes and solids and revisits work of artists like Robert Morris and Ellsworth Kelly, giving it a disco treatment of glitter, neon and gloss. The mathematical, science-fiction and new age references incorporated in the works comments on the ambivalent foretelling of utopian hope and dystopian vision of a near, yet unknown future.

The transmission between past and future is shown in the sculpture "The Omega Point" a portal that leads in or out of time and space. …

A connection to today's earlier post, Sunday SchoolThe Oslo Version, from Friday, May 21, 2010.

Lyche's "Omega Point" portal, together with her last name, suggested three posts from the following Saturday morning— which later proved to be the date of Martin Gardner's death—

Art Space, Through the Lyche Gate and The Lyche Gate Asterisk.

For some further religious remarks, see November 9th, 2010— A Theory of Pure Design.

Friday, February 11, 2011

Omega*

Filed under: General — m759 @ 1:00 pm

And I'd  like to thank the heroine of Finale

Image-- Josefine Lyche as Diamond Girl, representing the soul's triumph over evil

*  The title refers to a 2009 sculpture by Lyche

  http://www.log24.com/log/pix11/110212-OmegaPoint-Lyche-360w.jpg

   For a related shape, see today's noon post.

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Punch

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:31 am

David Corfield discusses the philosophy of mathematics (Dec. 14) —

"It’s very tricky choosing a rich and interesting case study which is philosophically salient. To encourage the reader or listener to follow up the mathematics to understand what you’re saying, there must be a decent pay-off. An intricate twentieth century case study had better pack plenty of meta-mathematical punch."

Steve Martin discusses the philosophy of art (Dec. 5) —

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101215-BraverMartin.jpg http://www.log24.com/log/pix10B/101215-WallPower.jpg

CBS News interviews Martin at the Whitney Museum —

"We paused to consider the impact of a George Bellows fight scene. Martin said it has 'wall power.'

What does that phrase mean? 'How it holds the wall. How it feels when you're ten or 20 feet away from it. It really takes hold of the room.'"

See also Halloween 2010

IMAGE- The 2x2 case of the diamond theorem as illustrated by Josefine Lyche, Oct. 2010

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Design

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 pm

A Theory of Pure Design

by Denman Waldo Ross

Lecturer on the Theory of Design
in Harvard University

Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1907

PREFACE

"My purpose in this book is to elucidate, so far as I can, the
principles which underlie the practice of drawing and painting
as a Fine Art.  Art is generally regarded as the expression of
feelings and emotions which have no explanation except per-
haps in such a word as inspiration , which is expletive rather
than explanatory
.  Art is regarded as the one activity of man
which has no scientific basis, and the appreciation of Art is
said to be a matter of taste in which no two persons can be
expected to agree.  It is my purpose in this book to show how,
in the practice of Art, as in all other practices, we use certain
terms and follow certain principles.  Being defined and ex-
plained, these terms and principles may be known and under-
stood by everybody.  They are, so to speak, the form of the
language
.

While an understanding of the terms and principles of Art
will not, in itself, enable any one to produce important works,
such works are not produced without it.  It must be understood,
however, that the understanding of terms and principles
is not, necessarily, an understanding in words.  It may lie in
technical processes and in visual images and may never rise,
or shall I say fall, to any formulation in words, either spoken
or written."

_________________________________________________

One of Ross's protégés, Jack Levine, died yesterday at 95. He
is said to have remarked, "I want to paint with the dead ones."

Related material: This journal on the day of Levine's death
and on the day of Martin Gardner's death.

The latter post has an image illustrating Ross's remarks on
formulations in words—
 

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

For further details, see Finale, Darkness Visible, and Packed.

Tuesday, November 2, 2010

A Dozen Pairs of Opposites —

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: — m759 @ 5:24 am

24 graphic patterns arranged in space
as 12 pairs of opposites

IMAGE- 'Permutahedron of Opposites'-- 24 graphic patterns arranged in space as 12 pairs of opposites

Click image for an illustration of how the above labeling was derived.

For further background, see Cases of the Diamond Theorem
and recent art by Josefine Lyche of Norway.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

Diamond Theorem in Norway

Filed under: General,Geometry — m759 @ 10:00 pm

IMAGE- The 2x2 case of the diamond theorem as illustrated by Josefine Lyche, Oct. 2010

Click on above image for artist's page.

Click here for exhibit page.

Click here for underlying geometry.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

Brightness at Noon, continued

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , — m759 @ 12:00 pm

"What exactly was Point Omega?"

This is Robert Wright in Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.

Wright is discussing not the novel Point Omega  by Don DeLillo,
but rather a (related) concept of  the Jesuit philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

My own idiosyncratic version of a personal "point omega"—

Image- Josefine Lyche work (with 1986 figures by Cullinane) in a 2009 exhibition in Oslo

Click for further details.

The circular sculpture in the foreground
is called by the artist "The Omega Point."
This has been described as
"a portal that leads in or out of time and space."

For some other sorts of points, see the drawings
on the wall and Geometry Simplified

Image-- The trivial two-point affine space and the trivial one-point projective space, visualized

The two points of the trivial affine space are represented by squares,
and the one point of the trivial projective space is represented by
a line segment separating the affine-space squares.

For related darkness  at noon, see Derrida on différance
as a version of Plato's khôra

(Click to enlarge.)

Image-- Fordham University Press on Derrida, differance, and khora

The above excerpts are from a work on and by Derrida
published in 1997 by Fordham University,
a Jesuit institutionDeconstruction in a Nutshell

Image-- A Catholic view of Derrida

For an alternative to the Villanova view of Derrida,
see Angels in the Architecture.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Omega at Eight

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , — m759 @ 8:00 pm

The "compact key to universal wisdom" passage in the previous post seemed
too well written to be the work of an anonymous webforum author.

Here is a slightly expanded version—

Throughout history mystics and philosophers have sought
a compact key to universal wisdom, a finite formula or text
that would provide the answer to every question. The use of
the Bible, the Koran and the I Ching for divination and the
tradition of the secret books of Hermes Trismegistus and the
medieval Jewish Cabala exemplify this belief or hope.  Such
sources of universal wisdom are traditionally protected from
casual use by being difficult to find as well as difficult to un-
derstand and dangerous to use, tending to answer more quest-
ions and deeper ones than the searcher wishes to ask. The
esoteric book is, like God, simple yet undescribable. It is om-
niscient, and it transforms all who know it. The use of clas-
sical texts to foretell mundane events is considered supersti-
tious nowadays, yet in another sense science is in quest of its
own Cabala, a concise set of natural laws that would explain
all phenomena. In mathematics, where no set of axioms can
hope to prove all true statements, the goal might be a concise
axiomatization of all "interesting" true statements.
      Ω is in many senses a Cabalistic number. It can be known
of through human reason, but not known. To know it in detail
one must accept its uncomputable sequence of digits on faith,
like words of a sacred text.   

This is Martin Gardner's* and Charles H. Bennett's
revised version of a passage from Bennett's  paper
"On Random and Hard-to-Describe Numbers," 1979.

The original passage from Bennett's paper—

Throughout history mystics and philosophers have sought a compact key to
universal wisdom, a finite formula or text which, when known and understood,
would provide the answer to every question. The Bible, the Koran, the mythical
secret books of Hermes Trismegistus, and the medieval Jewish Cabala have
been so regarded. Sources of universal wisdom are traditionally protected from
casual use by being hard to find, hard to understand when found, and dangerous
to use, tending to answer more and deeper questions than the user wishes to
ask. Like God the esoteric book is simple yet undescribable, omniscient, and
transforms all who know It. The use of classical texts to fortell [sic] mundane events
is considered superstitious nowadays, yet, in another sense, science is in quest of
its own Cabala, a concise set of natural laws which would explain all phenomena.
In mathematics, where no set of axioms can hope to prove all true statements,
the goal might be a concise axiomatization of all "interesting" true statements.
      Ω is in many senses a Cabalistic number. It can be known of, but not known,
through human reason. To know it in detail, one would have to accept its un-
computable digit sequence on faith, like words of a sacred text.

The Bennett paper deals with Gregory Chaitin's concept of an "Omega Number."

I prefer the Omega of Josefine Lyche—

Image-- Uncertified copy of 1986 figures by Cullinane in a 2009 art exhibit in Oslo

Click for further details.

See also All Hallows' Eve, 2002.

* Martin Gardner's Mathematical Games  column
"The Random Number Omega Bids Fair to Hold the Mysteries of the Universe,"
Scientific American, November 1979, 241(5), pp. 20–34.
The column is reprinted as "Chaitin's Omega," Ch. 21, pp. 307-319 in the
collection of Gardner's columns titled Fractal Music, Hypercards and More,
W.H. Freeman & Co., 1991

Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Imago, Imago, Imago

Filed under: General,Geometry — Tags: , , , , , — m759 @ 11:07 am

Recommended— an online book—

Flight from Eden: The Origins of Modern Literary Criticism and Theory,
by Steven Cassedy, U. of California Press, 1990.

See in particular

Valéry and the Discourse On His Method.

Pages 156-157—

Valéry saw the mind as essentially a relational system whose operation he attempted to describe in the language of group mathematics. "Every act of understanding is based on a group," he says (C, 1:331). "My specialty—reducing everything to the study of a system closed on itself and finite" (C, 19: 645). The transformation model came into play, too. At each moment of mental life the mind is like a group, or relational system, but since mental life is continuous over time, one "group" undergoes a "transformation" and becomes a different group in the next moment. If the mind is constantly being transformed, how do we account for the continuity of the self? Simple; by invoking the notion of the invariant. And so we find passages like this one: "The S[elf] is invariant, origin, locus or field, it's a functional property of consciousness" (C, 15:170 [2: 315]). Just as in transformational geometry, something remains fixed in all the projective transformations of the mind's momentary systems, and that something is the Self (le Moi, or just M, as Valéry notates it so that it will look like an algebraic variable). Transformation theory is all over the place. "Mathematical science . . . reduced to algebra, that is, to the analysis of the transformations of a purely differential being made up of homogeneous elements, is the most faithful document of the properties of grouping, disjunction, and variation in the mind" (O, 1:36). "Psychology is a theory of transformations, we just need to isolate the invariants and the groups" (C, 1:915). "Man is a system that transforms itself" (C, 2:896).

Notes:

  Paul Valéry, Oeuvres (Paris: Pléiade, 1957-60)

C   Valéry, Cahiers, 29 vols. (Paris: Centre National de le Recherche Scientifique, 1957-61)

Compare Jung's image in Aion  of the Self as a four-diamond figure:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100615-JungImago.gif

and Cullinane's purely geometric four-diamond figure:

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100615-FourD.gif

For a natural group of 322,560 transformations acting on the latter figure, see the diamond theorem.

What remains fixed (globally, not pointwise) under these transformations is the system  of points and hyperplanes from the diamond theorem. This system was depicted by artist Josefine Lyche in her installation "Theme and Variations" in Oslo in 2009.  Lyche titled this part of her installation "The Smallest Perfect Universe," a phrase used earlier by Burkard Polster to describe the projective 3-space PG(3,2) that contains these points (at right below) and hyperplanes (at left below).

Image-- Josefine Lyche's combination of Polster's phrase with<br /> Cullinane's images in her gallery show, Oslo, 2009-- 'The Smallest<br /> Perfect Universe -- Points and Hyperplanes'

Although the system of points (at right above) and hyperplanes (at left above) exemplifies Valéry's notion of invariant, it seems unlikely to be the sort of thing he had in mind as an image of the Self.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Annals of Art History

Filed under: General — m759 @ 11:00 am

On Misplaced Concreteness

An excerpt from China and Vietnam: The Politics of Asymmetry, by Brantly Womack (Cambridge U. Press, 2006)—

The book is intended to be a contribution to the general theory of international relations as well as to the understanding of China and Vietnam, but I give greater priority to “the case” rather than to the theory. This is a deliberate methodological decision. As John Gerring has argued, case studies are especially appropriate when exploring new causal mechanisms.2  I would argue more broadly that the “case” is the reality to which the theory is secondary. In international relations theory, “realism” is often contrasted to “idealism,” but surely a more basic and appropriate meaning of “realism” is to give priority to reality rather than to theory. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead defined the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness as “neglecting the degree of abstraction involved when an actual entity is considered merely so far as it exemplifies certain categories of thought.”3 In effect, the concept is taken as the concrete reality, and actual reality is reduced to a mere appendage of data. Misplaced Concreteness may well be the cardinal sin of modern social science. It is certainly pandemic in international relations theory, where a serious consideration of the complexities of real political situations is often dismissed as mere “area studies.” Like the Greek god Anteus who was sustained by touching his Mother Earth, theory is challenged and rejuvenated by planting its feet in thick reality.

2 John Gerring, "What Is a Case Study and What Is It Good For?"
   American Political Science Review  98:2 (May 2004), pp. 341-54
3 Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality
   (New York: Harper, 1929), p. 11

Remarks—

"Whitehead defined the Fallacy of Misplaced Concreteness…."

The phrase "misplaced concreteness" occurs in the title of a part of an exhibition, "Theme and Variations," by artist Josefine Lyche (Oslo, 2009). I do not know what Lyche had in mind when she used the phrase. A search for possible meanings yielded the above passage.

"In international relations theory, “realism” is often contrasted to “idealism….”

For a more poetic look at "realism" and "idealism" and international relations theory, see Midsummer Eve's Dream.

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Trilateral

Filed under: General — m759 @ 5:01 am

Image-- 'Greater East Asia' characters

"Greater East Asia" (大東亜 Dai-tō-a)
was a Japanese term
(banned during the post-war Occupation)
referring to Far East Asia. —Wikipedia

Image-- East Asia trilateral trade talks

Related historical remarks from Wikipedia

"From the Japanese point of view, one common principal reason stood behind both forming the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and initiating war with the Allies: Chinese markets. Japan wanted their 'paramount relations' in regard to Chinese markets acknowledged by the U.S. government. The U.S., recognizing the abundance of potential wealth in these markets, refused to let the Japanese have an advantage in selling to China."

"Shine on, shine on,
there is work to be done
in the dark before the dawn."

Daisy May Erlewine

Image-- trilateral corner piece 'White Light (Grey)' by Josefine Lyche, 2009

"The exhibition title Theme and Variations
hints at the analytical-intellectual undertone
Josefine Lyche takes this time, but
not without humorous touches."

Friday, May 28, 2010

Multispeech

Filed under: General — m759 @ 9:00 am

For Memorial Day Weekend:

Finn, again!

See also Time and Chance: Log24 Posts of Oct. 24, 2006*, which include a link to the work of Msgr. Robert Sokolowski of the Catholic University of America.

* For the connection between Finnegans Wake  and the date October 24, 2006, see Polyglot Joyce, p. 223, and Phrase Finder.

From the posts of Saturday, May 22— "The Lyche Gate was the covered gateway at the entrance of the church yard, where the corpse was rested until the priest issued from the church to meet the procession."

Ancient English Ecclesiastical Architecture, by Frank Wills, published by Stanford and Swords, 1850

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Sisteen

Filed under: General — Tags: , , , — m759 @ 9:57 am

"Nuvoletta in her lightdress, spunn of sisteen shimmers,
was looking down on them, leaning over the bannistars….

Fuvver, that Skand, he was up in Norwood's sokaparlour…."

Finnegans Wake

To counteract the darkness of today's 2:01 AM entry—

Part I— Artist Josefine Lyche describes her methods

A "Internet and hard work"
B "Books, both fiction and theory"

Part II I, too, now rely mostly on the Internet for material. However, like Lyche, I have Plan B— books.

Where I happen to be now, there are piles of them. Here is the pile nearest to hand, from top to bottom.

(The books are in no particular order, and put in the same pile for no particular reason.)

  1. Philip Rieff— Sacred Order/Social Order, Vol. I: My Life Among the Deathworks
  2. Dennis L. Weeks— Steps Toward Salvation: An Examination of Coinherence and Substitution in the Seven Novels of Charles Williams
  3. Erwin Panofsky— Idea: A Concept in Art Theory
  4. Max Picard— The World of Silence
  5. Walter J. Ong, S. J.— Hopkins, the Self, and God
  6. Richard Robinson— Definition
  7. X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia, eds.— An Introduction to Poetry
  8. Richard J. Trudeau— The Non-Euclidean Revolution
  9. William T. Noon, S. J.— Joyce and Aquinas
  10. Munro Leaf— Four-and-Twenty Watchbirds
  11. Jane Scovell— Oona: Living in the Shadows
  12. Charles Williams— The Figure of Beatrice
  13. Francis L. Fennell, ed.— The Fine Delight: Centenary Essays on the Poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins
  14. Hilary Putnam— Renewing Philosophy
  15. Paul Tillich— On the Boundary
  16. C. S. Lewis— George MacDonald

Lyche probably could easily make her own list of what Joyce might call "sisteen shimmers."

Monday, May 24, 2010

Finale

Filed under: General — m759 @ 4:16 pm

The weekend's posts in this journal coincided,
more or less, with the finale of the TV series "Lost."
Recalling each story brings to mind
the subtitle of Heinrich Zimmer's classic
  The King and the Corpse

Tales of the Soul's Conquest of Evil.

Here, in the spirit of "The Fifth Element," is a
brief graphic summary of such a conquest—

The Soul

(Click for details)

Image-- Josefine Lyche as Diamond Girl, representing the soul's triumph over evil

Evil

(from Saturday morning)

Image-- The Asterisk of Evil

Sunday, May 23, 2010

For Your Consideration —

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:10 am

Cannes Festival Readies for Awards Night

Uncertified Copy

Image-- Uncertified copy of 1986 figures by Cullinane in a 2009 art exhibit in Oslo

The pictures in the detail are copies of
figures created by S. H. Cullinane in 1986.
They illustrate his model of hyperplanes
and points in the finite projective space
known as PG(3,2) that underlies
Cullinane's diamond theorem.

The title of the pictures in the detail
is that of a film by Burkard Polster
that portrays a rival model of PG(3,2).

The artist credits neither Cullinane nor Polster.

Annals of Philosophy

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 3:33 am

Busy Night at the Lyche Gate

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100523-NYTobits.jpg

"When Death tells a story, you really have to listen."
 

Annals of Conceptual Art

Filed under: General — Tags: , , — m759 @ 2:02 am

Josefine Lyche's
  "Theme and Variations" (Oslo, 2009)

http://www.log24.com/log/pix10A/100523-LycheTandV.jpg

Some images in reply—

  Frame Tale

Confession in 'The Seventh Seal'

Image by R. T. Curtis from 'Further Elementary Techniques...'

Click on images for further details.

"In the name of the former
and of the latter
and of their holocaust.
  Allmen."

Finnegans Wake

Saturday, May 22, 2010

In the Details

Filed under: General — Tags: — m759 @ 10:31 am

Today's New York Times

Byzantine

"…there were fresh questions about whether the intelligence overhaul that created the post of national intelligence director was fatally flawed, and whether Mr. Obama would move gradually to further weaken the authorities granted to the director and give additional power to individual spy agencies like the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Blair and each of his predecessors have lamented openly that the intelligence director does not have enough power to deliver the intended shock therapy to America’s byzantine spying apparatus."

Catch-22 in Doonesbury today—

Image-- Chaplain and doctor in Doonesbury

From Log24 on Jan. 5, 2010—
   Artifice of Eternity

A Medal

In memory of Byzantine scholar Ihor Sevcenko,
who died at 87 on St. Stephen's Day, 2009–

Image-- Cross-in-circle design based on figure in Weyl's 'Symmetry'

Thie above image results from a Byzantine
meditation based on a detail in the previous post

Image-- 'Lyche Gate' with asterisk, from Google Books, digitized April 24, 2008

 

Image-- The Case of the Lyche Gate Asterisk

"This might be a good time to
call it a day." –Today's Doonesbury

"TOMORROW ALWAYS BELONGS TO US"
Title of an exhibition by young Nordic artists
in Sweden during the summer of 2008.

The exhibition included, notably, Josefine Lyche.

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